Nationality and Responsibility
Nationality and Responsibility
This chapter explores the argument that it cannot be anyone's responsibility to fulfill the rights of strangers on the other side of the globe, however much responsibility one may have to the deprived within one's own country. The core of this view can be called the thesis that compatriots take priority—take it at least in the case of duties to aid. The view need not completely deny that there are universal subsistence rights, but it does deny that any correlative duties to aid are universal, or even transnational. The view that compatriots take priority might accept the priority principle but restrict its application to the nation of the bearer of the duty. The chapter then surveys some of the major kinds of reasons offered for taking national boundaries so very seriously in what is fundamentally a moral issue, and indicates very briefly some reasons for doubt about each kind.
Keywords: responsibility, compatriots, subsistence rights, duties to aid, correlative duties, priority principle, national boundaries
Princeton Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.